LAX87FA267 · Cessna T210L
Cessna T210L · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO) to Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX87FA267
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 4 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Cessna T210L
- Aircraft type
- Cessna 210
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N7JT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO), Santa Monica, CATo Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC), San Jose, CA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · climb to cruise
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- In flight encounter with weather
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC); Stall/spin
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Flight controls, improper use of
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
- Pilot in command › Stall/spin, inadvertent
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
WEATHER AT DEPT AIRPORT WAS CLOUDS AT ABOUT 900 FT WITH TOPS AT 2,400 FT. BASED ON ATC TRANSCRIPTS AND THE RECORDED RADAR FLIGHT PATH, THE FLT ENTERED THE CLOUDS ABOUT 1 MILE FROM THE END OF THE RUNWAY. SHORTLY THEREAFTER THE FLT ENTERED THE LOS ANGELES TCA. THE SANTA MONICA LOCAL CONTROLLER THEN TOLD THE PILOT HIS POSITION AND ADVISED HIM TO EXIT THE AREA. THE RECORDED RADAR DATA SHOWED THE AIRCRAFT THEN ENTERED A RIGHT 270 DEG TURN FOLLOWED BY A SHARP LEFT TURN. WITNESSES ON A BOAT SAW THE AIRCRAFT IN A STEEP CLIMB ATTITUDE JUST BELOW THE BASES OF THE CLOUDS FOLLOWED BY ROLLING OVER AND DIVING STEEPLY TO THE OCEAN.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX87FA267
- Event ID
- 20001213X31546
- Case number
- LAX87FA267
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: db92d94cc214883338cab817ac1285ddacb6390c869223f62b470f7c1a36bae6; retrieved 2026-09-21T04:04:21.486Z.